Designed Forests: A Cultural History [Paperback]

Preface? Introduction? 1. Engineered Forests? 2. Jungle? 3. The Thousand-Year Forest? 4. Ecological Havens? 5. Ubiquitous Intelligence

This book explores the unique kinship that exists between forests and spatial design, the forests influence on architectural culture and practice, and the potentials and pitfalls of forest thinking for more sustainable and ethical ways of doing architecture today.?

Dan Handel is an architect and curator whose work focuses on underexplored ideas, figures, and practices that shape contemporary built environments. Over the past fifteen years, he has been studying the links between scientists, forest managers, and spatial designers, resulting in various exhibitions and publications on the subject.

Forests cover over four billion hectares of our planet earth. In his brilliant book, Dan Handel reminds us that our forests project a powerful image of nature even though they are constructed, man-made and totally designed. Handel skillfully weaves together a riveting narrative inextricably linking forest to culture, geography, and our human condition.

Professor Brigitte Shim, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto

In the process of asking questions about how forests are rationalized culturally, Handel advances the political control of reforestation, which ultimately reveals that making or conserving forests is a design project. Outside of the current environmental crisis, what this book?offers is a richly illustrated account of the global movement to create, protect and plant forests, while provoking artists, designers and planners to consider their role in the affair.

Rosetta Elkin, Academic Director, Master in Landscape Architecture Program, Pratt Institute

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